1997 - THE 2ND DAY OF CHRISTMAS, #7

More from the Christmas clone machine with a few twists.  This one was filmed in Canada with Vancouver subbing for New York City so at least there is snow on the ground.

The cast is not that bad.  Mark Ruffalo who now plays The Hulk in those Marvel movies is the lead.  The Hulk character is either a step up from bad Christmas movies or a step down for Ruffalo.  Mary Stuart Masterson is the female lead.  She's a shoplifter who plays the Aunt to yet another child actress.  Masterson  is trying to raise the kid by making the peculiar parenting choice of teaching her to shoplift.  She gets caught by the Hulk guy and in a very contrived situation has to spend the Christmas holiday with him.  Guess what's going to happen next?

Just more of the same in this movie.  The 2nd Day of Christmas is competently directed by James Frawley who has had a long career directing TV shows and movies.  He directed the first Muppet movie and that funny cult classic The Big Bus.  So at least this thing is well made.

96 Minutes.

1986 - A SMOKY MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS. #6 in the Christmas film marathon

It's sure not getting any easier watching Christmas films this month.  I decided on a different approach and went with more established entertainment personalities.  That is how I ended up watching a film with Dolly Parton and Lee Majors as the stars and actor Henry Winker calling the shots behind the camera. 

Lee is first billed on the credits but Dolly takes a screen credit for original story and what a story.  Dolly plays a famous country western singer who wants to get back to her roots by returning to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee.  She goes to a remote cabin where she finds seven count em seven orphans hiding out.  She meets Lee Majors playing a character called Mountain Dan and there is an evil mountain witch involved.  Yes, Dolly has cribbed the plot for her original story from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Usually in these Christmas movies the director has one obnoxious child actor to deal with but Director Winkler must have had his hands full dealing with seven of these little monsters, none of whom can act.  Dolly plays herself and sings a lot of songs on the guitar.  In fact she spits out Christmas songs like they were used pieces of chewing gum.  Lee Majors as "Mountain Dan"  plays the same character he always played in The Fall Guy or The Six Million Dollar Man, so there is some comfort in.  Henry Winkler doesn't show much talent behind the camera the film is barely competent in the staging, the actors kind of stumble around the sets.

 Throughout the film the viewer is constantly reminded of what a "hot chick" Dolly Parton is.  Frankly with her weird body, painted on makeup and her very large hair which actually overshadows her very large bosom she's kind of gross and how many women living in a cabin in the mountains walk around in stiletto heels?

Another horrible holiday movie which has nothing to do with the Christmas holiday.

94 minutes.

2010 - CHRISTMAS CUPID, #5 in the Christmas countdown

This is the Christmas movie where our heroine is called a "slut" and a "bitch" by a Christmas spirit in this updating of the Charles Dickens story.

What can be said by now upon finishing this Christmas film.  Some singer who I've barely heard of named Christina Milan is visited by the ghosts of three boyfriends from the past, present and future.  I've got the drill by down by now, it's another film about a woman trying to get a boyfriend with the Christmas holiday serving as the background to all this relationship stuff.

I'm not exactly sure who the intended audience for this film was.  You wouldn't want to watch it with Grandma and probably not with your younger daughter the last thing anyone needs in a Christmas movie is a bunch of pseudo sexuality stuck into a so called Christmas film.

Well anyway as with the previous films, it's poorly acted and badly written.  This movie does have a little more polish to it mostly because the production had a bigger budget than the other films I've been watching.  Still Christmas Cupid is a very worthless film.

85 minutes.

2004 - A VERY COOL CHRISTMAS, #4 in the Christmas movie viewing marathon

Crappy production values, another look-a-like bunch of teenage actors and "where's my paycheck" performer George Hamilton probably shooting every scene in one take so he could get the hell off the set. 

This is a so called Christmas comedy involves for lack of a better phrase. A valley girl hanging around at the shopping mall comes to realize that the real Santa Claus is actually working the kid greeting kiosk posing for pictures.  For reasons that are just incredibly stupid, she gives Santa a makeover and he comes out looking like George Hamilton.  But not just any old George Hamilton he has his special Santa powers of flying in a sled or a hot sports car and popping down chimneys.  

The valley girl played by some actress named Brooke Niven was the future star of I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, is another bubble brained latte drinking teenager that accompanies Santa Hamilton on his Christmas Eve journey.  There seems to be a lot of these types of teenagers showing up in Christmas movies.

As stupid as this movie is it still can't touch A Mom For Christmas as the bottom of the barrel of recent Christmas movies.  Frankly, watching these films is getting tough.

90 minutes.

2007 - A GRANDPA FOR CHRISTMAS, #3 in the Christmas film countdown.

A slight improvement in quality from the previous Christmas epic A Mom for Christmas.  This film is better only because the cast of professional actors is so much better than the non-acting bunch of that film with one exception.  That exception is yet another dreadful little child actor named Juliette Goglia.  This kid not only over emotes but sings and dances like some kind of Las Vegas showgirl.  Goglia just can't sing a song at a school Christmas pageant she has to murder it.  She dances and struts all over the stage like Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls.

Probably the main attraction is the adult cast of the film.  It's a list of professional TV actors headed by that old trooper Ernest Borgnine who must have been pushing about 90 years old when they finished this.  Borgnine worked into his mid 90's in the entertainment business.

Honestly, this film isn't so hot.  The story is another one of those family dramas where nobody likes or understands each other mostly because of some misunderstanding that occurred years ago.  These kinds of stories could be easily resolved if everyone sat down and talked to each other but then there would be no movie.

This is the kind of film that would be considered safe viewing for the entire family.  Everyone can relate to a sentimental story of a family coming together during the Christmas season and Ernest Borgnine is basically a big loveable teddy bear.

120 minutes

1990 - A MOM FOR CHRISTMAS, No. 2 in the Christmas film series

Two films into this month's Christmas film festival.   I am wondering if I have already hit rock bottom with this piece of crap that is so bad it barely mentions Christmas and certainly doesn't evoke the spirit of the holiday.  At least The Christmas Candle had that going for it.

Olivia Newton John is a store mannequin brought to life after a little girl wishes she could have a mom for the Christmas holiday to be with her and her widower father.  Almost immediately visions of one of the plots of The Twilight Zone come to mind.  But Rod Serling never had someone as vacant as Olivia Newton John to deal with.  In fact I think it's safe to say that Olivia Newton John actually plays her character with all the personality of a mannequin.

The comedy in this film is extremely forced and after a while the film features an incredibly tasteless plot turn where the living mannequin and the father fall in love with each other. There is just something very icky about a plastic mannequin being the obsession of a workahcolic male.  It's kind of like he got himself a sex toy or something.

The little girl is played by one of the most appalling child actors I have seen in a while,  Juliet Sorci.   Sorci whimpers and simpers throughout the film when she's not having temper tantrums. 

But fear not precious viewer.  Like Pinocchio, the mannequin becomes a real boy girl thanks to the magic of Christmas.  I guess I should mention this is another Christmas film with poor dialog, acting and direction which seems to be par for the course for these films.

96 minutes

2013 - THE CHRISTMAS CANDLE, 1st of the 12 films of Christmas project

The rules for the posts this month.  Only Christmas movies.  No movie can be one that is already considered a classic such as It's A Wonderful Life or White Christmas.  You have been warned.  Let's start with The Christmas Candle a piece of religious slop from last year.

Hot

In this film, an angel appears every 25 years to a candlemaker's shop and turns one of his candles into a magic candle which will grant wishes to whoever lights it.  The film is set in a town in jolly old England.  The town is run by a rich woman who seeks out a minister for her Church and who will buy into this magic candle stuff.  The town lives in a state of poverty but the lady "to the manor born" wouldn't think of giving money to anyone when she can get these people to run around chasing their tails looking for a magic candle.

Well into this cheery little scene comes a minister who has sort of lost his faith in God after his wife and daughter have died of consumption, a noted movie disease.  Guess who ends up getting the magic candle, gets his faith restored and for good measure gets the only hot chick in the village.  It really was a magic candle after all.

Not Hot

The film is a who's who of English actors who I have never heard of and don't have a clue about.   The exception is the very scary Susan Boyle that well known warbler of "I Dreamed a Dream." In this film she sings a song about a magic Christmas candle of course. 

There is nothing really all that bad about this film.  The problem is that there is nothing particularly special or good about it either.  I don't doubt the sincerity of the makers of The Christmas Candle  I just question their choice of material and the way they handled it.


100 minutes

2002 - THE SUM OF ALL FEARS - more spy vs spy stuff from Tom Clancy

An attempt to reboot the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan thriller franchise with a new actor playing Ryan, Ben Affleck.  The role had previously been played by Alec Baldwin and then Harrison Ford.  Those films had been highly successful at the box office.  However the studio did not want to continue to payout the large sums of cash Ford was asking for with each successive film.

The Sum Of All Fears was like one of those Spider man films.  The studio pretended the first series never existed and just started the whole thing over with a different and cheaper actor.  So in The Sum Of All Fears, Jack Ryan is no longer the deputy CIA director.  This film takes him all the way back to being a desk bound intelligence analyst.

This film is watchable but a little lazy.  The bad guys are the movies favorite villains the ex Nazis.  They are attempting to start a new world order by tricking the United  States and the Soviet Union into going to war with each other.  This old standby of a plot has been used in just about every other James Bond film.

 

This is a perfectly acceptable B-flat thriller nothing special but watchable.

124 minutes, screenplay by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne.

1959 - THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII,

Muscle man Steve Reeves, is a Roman soldier returning to his old hometown of Pompeii after duty in Palestine.  He runs into a lot of political intrigue with some evil Pompeiians who are framing the Christians for murder and looting sprees.  Reeves gets to the bottom of things and figures out who is framing the Christians.

However the Christians are rounded up and sent to the arena to get eaten by the lions.  Just when things couldn't get worse Mt. Vesuvius erupts which resolves the whole mess by destroying everything in sight.

What we have here is kind of a cut rate version of I Claudius with some destruction stuff thrown in for good measure.  The volcano stuff at the end of the film isn't too bad the rest of the film is only so so.  This film is basically for people who enjoy these cheesy Italian "sword and sandal" epics/

100 minutes.

2010 - SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO - Space is the place

The live action version of the early Anime series known as Star Blazers in this country.  This film follows the story of the early anime film fairly closely and I have to give it credit it certainly is action packed.

The film run over 2 hours but it seemed like a quick 2 hours.  If the crew of the Yamato isn't blasting away at the "Gamilas" fighters in Star Wars type space dogfights the crew of the Yamato is mowing them down in hand to hand laser weapon fighting.  The special effects are actually pretty well done and the cast does manage to keep a straight face

This is one of those films that 12 year old boys will love.  It keeps that gross kissing and love stuff to a minimum and concentrates on the action.  Let's face is this film was never going to be confused with Kurosawa's Ran.

Given what this film is I was impressed by the semi downbeat ending the studio allowed the filmmakers to tack on to it.  Pretty well done considering the source material is from an old cartoon series.

138 minutes.

1985 - PHENOMENA - Another Argento gore film

A very attractive and very young Jennifer Connelly is the heroine of this Dario Argento film which features a lot of disgusting killings by a homicidal maniac, lots of gore and body parts everywhere.  That's entertainment I guess.  The twist in Phenomena is that Connelly has some sort of psychic powers that allow her to communicate with insects.  Connelly and the insect friends team up to track down the killer. 

Argento keeps Connelly dressed mostly in virginal white outfits and manages at one point to have her wandering around in her underwear.  It sounds exploitative and it probably is but in this film Connelly is a fairly tough little cookie facing down the psycho killer.  The big problem with casting Connelly was that she just couldn't act.  Connelly struggles to look like she is actually worried about all these disgusting killings of students at the all girls school she attends but she comes off like she lost some of her Barbie dolls instead.

I have to give it to Argento, even with all the gore and nasty killings he does bring a lot of style of the film.  I think the question is at what point does the film cross the line?  At times Argento seems like a nasty little kid whose idea of fun is pulling the wings off of live flies. 

Well there's never a dull moment in this Argento film and the soundtrack choices are very effective.  This giallo film is probably mostly for fans of the director and I am guessing his fans are a rather strange bunch if they get off on this stuff.  Stylish gory horror films are only going to get you so far in your film career.

110 minutes, written by Franco Ferrini and Dario Argento.

1946 - MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, another excellent Blu Ray from Criterion

A great disc from Criterion.  My Darling Clementine's photography really jumps out with it's stunning black and white images.

It's well documented that Darryl F. Zanuck ended up reworking the film much to Ford's displeasure but it appears that Zanuck got rid of a lot of Ford's cornball humor and indulgent character touches.  A pre-release version is featured on this new disc but it's no undiscovered Director's Cut of great scenes.

Henry Fonda had worked with Ford on Young Mr. Lincoln and his understated performance is very impressive.  Fonda was no John Wayne and the film really benefits from that.  The rest of the cast particularly Victor Mature as Doc Holliday was very good.

Ford directs, that's him on the floor staging the dance sequence he's between the flags.

This was the last picture on Ford's contract for Zanuck.  Zanuck made sure this was an "A" quality production.  The set for the town of Tombstone was actually constructed in Monument Valley to take advantage of the scenery.

Ford was a master of filming long shots.  His sophisticated visual scene is quite striking on My Darling Clementine.

97 minutes, written by Samuel G. Engel and Winston Miller.

2014 - THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, I think I've heard this same old song before

Doesn't anyone remember Star Wars Episode 4 anymore?  Guardians of the Galaxy borrows a lot from that film.  The green woman is a stand in for Princess Lea, Star Lord is Han Solo, the tree creature is Chewbacca and there's a couple of bad guys who are clearly modeled after Darth Vader and The Emperor.

A lot of drivel was written on the Internet about how this was Marvel Studio's phase 3 in their story arch series, but this film sure looks a lot like phases 1 and 2 to me.  There is an elaborate story arc connection with regard to some magic stones or something that has been in the works and referenced in the last several Marvel movies.  However I skipped the last Thor movie because I just didn't care so I don't know if the power stones were mentioned in that film or not.

This was the film that supposedly was to be loaded up with humor.  What passes for humor in the Marvel Universe is a talking racoon and listening to music mix cassette tapes from the 1970's.  Chris Pratt appears to have been hired to carry the comedic load and I guess he does about as well as can be expected with the script and story.  Speaking of the script the co-writer and director James Gunn plays it very safe in this film.  There is none of the subversive and sick humor that permeated his bizarre film Super.  I'm sure the studio wasn't about to go down any road that made fun of religious fanaticism. 

Come to think of it Guardians of the Galaxy also borrows from another classic film, The Dirty Dozen.  Assemble a team of people who barely get along with each other and have them work together to fight the evil Nazis Kree.  This is a very derivative film.

The audience I saw this film with loved it and this film made a lot of money.

122 minutes.

2014 - THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2, is commercial filmmaking at its most cynical

The first reboot of the Spiderman series was no classic, the 2nd film unimaginatively called The Amazing Spiderman 2 manages to be even less successful as a commercial entertainment.  I lasted about 45 minutes to an hour on this turkey, skimming ahead to watch the final fight between Electric guy or whatever the villain's name is and the Green Goblin who shows up towards the end because you can't have enough action stuff going on unless you completely overwhelm the audience with noise and chaos.

The main leads in the film Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are supposedly to be playing teenagers graduating from school.  They are starting to look a little long in the tooth.  Garfield is 31 years old and Stone is 26 and the cuteness thing she had in the first film is looking a little rough around the edges.  The rest of the cast is clearly slumming in the great "where's my paycheck" school of acting tradition.  Particularly pathetic is Paul Giamatti who is supposed to play the villain "Rhino."  Giamatti shows up at the beginning of the film and the end of the film blathering in some ridiculous Russian accent.

The action scenes are the usual overdose of computer imaging Spiderman flying around New York looks like a cartoon character who would be at home in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Spiderman is never in real danger because Sony Pictures had announced that there would be another film is this series with Spiderman taking on the Sinister Six, whoever they are.

Unfortunately for Sony, this picture was not the big blockbuster hit they had been hoping for.  The film made money but not the millions and millions of dollars they wanted.  Apparently the studio is spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to save this series from the ennui that seems to be settling in on these superhero films.

142 minutes.

2014 - EDGE OF TOMORROW aka Live Die Repeat

Edge of Tomorrow was the summer action film that received good reviews from most of the critics and failed to be the big blockbuster Warner Brothers Studio was looking for.  After watching this film I would include myself in the "why didn't this film take off" camp.  However, I will have to admit I did not rush out to see it this summer.

In spite of the good reviews, the thought of sitting through another Tom Cruise movie was just not very appealing.  It's unfortunate, because Cruise actually has to put in a little more work on his character in this film.  For a guy in his 50's he seemed to be getting slightly long in the tooth to be playing his usual smiling preppy character.  At least that was my thought anyway. 

I had no interest in putting up pictures of Tom Cruise again

Obviously the influence of Groundhog Day and video games is in this film.  But director Doug Lyman stages the film in such an entertaining way it's not a distraction but a clever way to tell the story of yet another alien invasion.   

Considering all the hard work that everyone obviously put into a fairly original film for a change Edge of Tomorrow should have done much better.  Unfortunately this film will only add fuel to the fire of promoting sequels and comic book franchise films.  Warner Brothers has learned its lesson and has announced that it will be making at least ten films based on DC comic book super heros.

Well in spite of all the baggage that this film carried, Edge of Tomorrow is a very good science fiction/action film.

113 minutes

2014 - LUCY, science fiction action thriller from Luc Besson

In this highly ridiculous but highly entertaining science fiction thriller from Luc Besson.  Scarlett Johansson is forced to consume large quantities of some weird drug by an evil Korean gangster.  This drug expands the powers of her brain while draining her of her emotions and humanity.  She becomes sort of a "Mr. Spock" crossed with "Carrie" combination.

The emotionless character Lucy is the perfect part for the monotone none acting of Scarlett Johansson.  Throw in "anything for a paycheck" actor Morgan Freeman, a bunch of nasty Koreans and some French guys and you have the perfect bizarre cast to keep you watching.

At times Lucy seems like it's trying to say something about evolution and the human condition.  But just when things are getting a little pretentious, Besson throws in a gunfight between the bad Koreans and the French police guys  This is all highly entertaining if violent nonsense put together in an enjoyable manner.

Luc Besson may have made a ridiculous film but he was smart enough to keep the running time down to less than 90 minutes.  A very tall tale like this film doesn't bare a whole lot of scrutiny.

89 minutes.

1973 - THE MACKINTOSH MAN, a spy thriller with Paul Newman directed by John Huston.

Paul Newman takes another shot at an espionage thriller 17 years after appearing in Hitchcock's spy movie disaster Torn Curtain.  The Mackintosh Man was directed by another veteran filmmaker John Huston.  

Newman is a secret agent undercover for British Intelligence.  He is supposedly on the trail of a notorious British traitor but as in all of these serious spy films, all is not what it seems. 

The Mackintosh Man is smoothly and efficiently directed by John Huston.  Maybe a little too smoothly for that matter.  The veteran director doesn't seem to have much interest in the film.  The action scenes are tossed off so nonchalantly it's as if they were almost a second thought. 

This is a good looking film, well photographed by Oswald Morris in Ireland and Malta.  The film has a good cast beginning with Paul Newman, James Mason and Dominique Sanda.  There are also many British character actors like Michael Hordon and Harry Andrews.  It's unfortunate that Huston couldn't bring any interest to the film.  However The Mackintosh Man is still very watchable for the most part.

98 minutes, screenplay by Walter Hill and William Fairchild.

1970 - DARKER THAN AMBER - a would be cult film

A film based on the popular Travis McGee series of detective novels.  Since I have never read any of these books and am barely aware of the character Travis McGee this was all news to me.

Darker Than Amber is supposedly considered a cult film.  But you would have to read a lot into this film to figure out where the cult status comes from.  Maybe the brutal fight scenes or the chief psychotic (what else) villain played by veteran character actor William Smith are supposed to give the film its cult status but I think that would be pushing it.

Darker Than Amber was directed by Robert Clouse whose claim to fame is Enter the Dragon.  Clouse isn't particularly adept at staging action scenes or actually any scenes for that matter.  The film kind of plods along from one cliched story point to another, McGee falls in love, McGee solves a murder, McGee has a fight with a real touch guy, etc.

Veteran actor Rod Taylor is Travis McGee but he basically plays Rod Taylor.  Suzy Kendall who had been in some Italian Giallo films is the love interest.

96 minutes, written by John D. MacDonald and Ed Waters.

1964 - MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE, a classic Italian film from Vittorio De Sica

A classic Italian comedy/drama from a director considerably less flamboyant than Fellini but no less important, Vittorio De Sica.  Marriage Italian Style stars larger than life personalities Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.  The story features Loren as the mistress of Mastroianni over a 20 year period.  A spouse in every way but legally Loren finally resorts to some drastic measures in their relationship.

This is Loren in her prime sex goddess period and frankly when the film started I was expecting the worst and for a while I got it.  But  De Sica was one of the few directors who could actually get a real performance out of her.  She even credibly ages without the benefit of using her looks or her bosom.  Mastroianni plays the usual excitable Italian who is somewhat of an ass. 

Mastroianni, Loren and Vittorio De Sica

The film is supposedly a comedy, but frankly there is more drama than comedy in it.  De Sica focuses on the exploitation of Italian women in a culture that is absolutely oozing with male chauvinism.

Vittorio De Sica was a  meticulous craftsman.  The film is extremely well directed with excellent color photography.

102 minutes

1993 - TOMBSTONE, back at the OK Corral

Back in Tombstone again in 1993 with another big budget production of the Wyatt Earp saga.  This time the script aims to stick a little closer to the facts and follows up the shootout at the OK Corral with all of the bloody revenge killings that occurred afterwards.  The writer Kevin Jarre probably got as true to the actual story as any Hollywood studio would allow.

Unfortunately for Jarre, who started out as the director of Tombstone, he was removed and replaced by George Pan Cosmatos director of such action junk as Rambo 2, Escape from Athena, and Cobra. This insured that Tombstone would have plenty of violence.

The cast of Tombstone is somewhat impressive, Kurt Russell, Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton and Val KIlmer stealing the film as Doc Holliday.  Also somewhat impressive are the mustaches these guy sport throughout the film.  At times it's impossible to tell who is who with all the facial hair everywhere.

Tombstone is a decent attempt to tell an interesting and mostly true story about the America West which ends up in the second half of the film as just a lot of people getting shot up.  It is not an especially memorial or great western.

130 minutes.

1957 - GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL - a big budget Western from the 1950's.

If High Noon started the "adult Western" craze in Hollywood five years earlier, Gunfight at the OK Corral could be the peak of this sub genre.  Producer Hal Wallis hired the best talent he could get beginning with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster as Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp.  John Sturges starting to enter the best part of his career was the director and novelist Leon Uris wrote the screenplay.

However with all the talent involved this film really could have been a little better.  Probably the chief problem was the screenplay.  For all the attempts to make the film "adult" Uris loads the story up with the usual cliches, the lawman whose woman wants him to give up being a sheriff, the kid brother gunned down by the evil outlaws, the rival gunmen who respect each other so much they become friends etc.  Come to think of it Leon Uris was the author of Topaz which turned out to be one of the worst Hitchcock films made.

This film certainly has a mucho macho cast.   Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, John Ireland, Dennis Hopper, Martin Milner, Lee Van Cleef, Earl Holliman, Lyle Bettger and "Bones McCoy" DeForest Kelly.  There is enough manliness in that bunch to power about three westerns.  Lancaster is all straight laced virtue as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas is all over the place with his wild performance as the tubercular Doc Holliday.  If you are a woman in this cast trying to make an impression, you can forget it.

The previous version of this story, My Darling Clementine is considered one of John Ford's best films.  However Gunfight at the OK Corral won't ever be confused with that film. 

122 minutes.

1996 - THE FRIGHTENERS, a cult director goes mainstream

5 years before Peter Jackson started releasing The Lord of the Rings films, he made a jump into big time Hollywood studio film making with this film The Frighteners.  At this point in his career Jackson was a cult horror film director who had gained some respectability with Heavenly Creatures. Robert Zemeckis and Universal Studios decided to go ahead with one of his original screenplays about a psychic detective and his ghost associates who confront a serial killer ghost.

The Frighteners was intended as a mix of very black comedy and horror.  There is a heavy influence of Ghostbusters in this film.  But the comedy horror mix was not as well executed as that film.  Jackson's low budget horror roots are evident throughout the film. 

What the film has going for it is a decent cast particularly Michael J. Fox as the sort of bogus psychic detective.  Fox was always a very sharp performer particularly when it came to comedy and in The Frighteners he needs all the good will he can generate because this film has some extremely nasty stuff in it.

The Frighteners marks the beginning of Peter Jackson's very heavy reliance on computer generated visual effects which was to reach it's nadir in The Lord of the Rings series.  Today it seems that Jackson can't make a film unless he smothers it with lots of special effects.

110 minutes, written by Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson.

2011 - THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO - the remake

A failed attempt to start an Americanized version of the Stieg Larsson trilogy chronicling the adventures of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the goth Lisbeth Salander an almost unbelievable female character who is part Superwoman, computer genius and a scary Agatha Christie detective type of character.

 The remake was  meant to cash in on the Larsson trilogy by making a film set in Sweden without those pesky subtitles to translate the Swedish dialog.  However this was no cheap rip off.  The director is David Fincher who kind of specializes in creepy thrillers like Seven, Zodiac and Panic Room.  The writer was Steven Zaillan who has been associated with classy films like Schindler's List and Gangs of New York.   This was not some lame Roger Corman production.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 2011 version appears to follow the original 2009 film fairly closely to the best of my memory.  Maybe it's a little to close, I felt like I was watching the same film over again except no one this time sounded like that Muppet Swedish Chef puppet.  It appears there was some attempt to streamline the last part of the plot but this version has the same issues as the original film, a very messy episodic story that doesn't seem to be able to focus on one main plot.

This is one of those films where the production company wanted to have their cake and eat as much as possible.  The filmmakers wanted commercial success and awards.  In this case the end result was middling on both accounts.

158 minutes.

2104 - TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION - # 4 in the series

Coming in close to 3 hours.  It's hard to believe we've come this far in this rock em sock em robot extravaganza since the 1984 cartoon series that I believe aired in syndication.  The original cartoon series was cheaply made with limited animation and simplistic plots for kids, primarily young boys.  It was all about selling toys back then.

30 years later this series is now a big budget Hollywood production although the plots are still about on the level of the cartoon series.  2007 was the first appearance of the Transformers directed by the master of large scale action, Michael Bay.  Bay has now invested about 7 years of his life in this series but since the films have made so much money I can imagine he has been well paid.  Come to think of it, I've been watching these films for 7 years now and nobody is paying me for my time.

Sick at home with food poisoning of all things, this seemed like the perfect non think film to watch while my temperature climbed to 102.  However after about an hour of robots throwing each other around  I grabbed my laptop and spent the rest of the running time of the film wasting my time on the internet while the computer generated robots constantly bashed and smashed each other.

It seems like these big robot movies have kind of worn out their welcome but this latest Transformers movie has made a lot of money guaranteeing that there will be a Transporters 5.  But let it be said this is not a good popcorn film.

165 minutes.

1954 - DIAL M FOR MURDER, a very good Hitchcock film.

Not very much to write about on this one.  Dial M for Murder is now regarding as one of Hitchcock's best films.

As previously discussed by a lot of film scholars and critics, Hitchcock took a one set play by the author Frederick Knott and with clever use of camera angles and lighting was able to make the play look like a film.  A lot of film scholars think this is the Hitchcock film to study if you want to learn about his film technique.

Hitchcock always claimed that he could have phoned this film in.  He apparently was planning Rear Window while making this film but re-watching this film it's hard to believe he wasn't engaged in this production.  The film was made during the 3-D craze and Hitchcock got stuck with filming in 3-D which he used rather subtlety probably a little to subtlety as it turned out.  I saw the film in 3-D many years ago and after watching it I wasn't exactly sure what the 3-D brought to the film going experience.

Dial M for Murder is a very good film made by the master of the film medium. It's also Hitchcock's first film with Grace Kelly who looks like a million bucks.

105 minutes screenplay by the author of the play.